Let's start off with the bad news.
- All 4 reveg didn't make it
It's been unusually hotter the last week and they were starting to have vegetative regrowth, but the heat (and probably humidity) did them in. They were really good plants, but there will be more. So far my reveg attempts have gone well in the beginning but ended up tragic.
- The heat and humidity has pretty much confirmed that there is no way I can run with HPS in the summer unless some drastic environment changes happen (such as making climate controlled rooms in the garage instead of using tents). I still have 4 small plants in the tent using Coco Loco and a mini F&D that have a long ways to go. I think they either brought in or attracted whiteflies (with the Coco Loco), which were under control pretty well, but the mini heat-wave seems to have made the problem worse. The dehumidifier has helped the PM situation immensely, but the entire tent needs to definitely be wiped down before moving the next totes in to continue the pHunt. I may end up sacrificing these plants and refrain from putting anything but hydro in there to help mitigate the potential for whiteflies to thrive again.
- due to the heat, several plants got affected with crispy leaves. Most of the buds are ok. 3 plants (out of 'several') got top bud rot on the upper half, which I clipped off to save the rest of the plants. Summer temps will only make this worse, hence the apprehension with using HPS.
I really need to get away from HPS altogether, but it's what I had to use (run whatcha brung). They were a cheap stopgap while I was building my new light arsenal. As I'm obtaining better lights (REAL LEDs), I can now start moving away from HPS, and maybe consider them for winter grows only. The CMH are really good, but slightly add to the heat issue (not nearly as much as HPS). It couldn't be a better time to start back up with the bedroom 5x5 RDWC. I was intending on using all LED strips in the 5x5, turning them up to only around 70% or so to get the spread while being more efficient on power usage. However, the better solution seems to be running only 4 bars along with some supplemental red/uv and maybe a CMH. We'll see. With crisis comes opportunity, so the remaining 4 bars may be used along with the Viparspectras in the garage flower tent in an attempt to lower heat while maintaining adequate light, hopefully to squeeze out another (smaller) run before the real summer heat kicks in. Eventually everything will be replaced with more "REAL LEDs" like the bars.
To put things in perspective, there is quite a bit of drying/trimming/curing coming up along with cleanup, garage flower tent prep, bedroom rdwc setup, cloning the pHunt, propagation tent prep, maintaining the site and the budding shirt & craft projects...the list goes on. Not to mention I have a day job and a family ? This is the epitome of "be careful what you wish for" ? The pHunt plants are going to be finishing week 4 of veg, which makes me really nervous because I haven't vegged this long since soil/coco, and I'm already anticipating some big plants, even for smaller pots (especially in the RDWC, this oughta be interesting to say the least).
Nevertheless, it has been a crazy and AWESOME ride so far. I wouldn't trade this for anything (well, maybe my day job if I could do this as a career, that way I could put 117% of my efforts towards it all ?)
Now that's outta the way, time for some pics.
- All 4 reveg didn't make it
It's been unusually hotter the last week and they were starting to have vegetative regrowth, but the heat (and probably humidity) did them in. They were really good plants, but there will be more. So far my reveg attempts have gone well in the beginning but ended up tragic.- The heat and humidity has pretty much confirmed that there is no way I can run with HPS in the summer unless some drastic environment changes happen (such as making climate controlled rooms in the garage instead of using tents). I still have 4 small plants in the tent using Coco Loco and a mini F&D that have a long ways to go. I think they either brought in or attracted whiteflies (with the Coco Loco), which were under control pretty well, but the mini heat-wave seems to have made the problem worse. The dehumidifier has helped the PM situation immensely, but the entire tent needs to definitely be wiped down before moving the next totes in to continue the pHunt. I may end up sacrificing these plants and refrain from putting anything but hydro in there to help mitigate the potential for whiteflies to thrive again.
- due to the heat, several plants got affected with crispy leaves. Most of the buds are ok. 3 plants (out of 'several') got top bud rot on the upper half, which I clipped off to save the rest of the plants. Summer temps will only make this worse, hence the apprehension with using HPS.
I really need to get away from HPS altogether, but it's what I had to use (run whatcha brung). They were a cheap stopgap while I was building my new light arsenal. As I'm obtaining better lights (REAL LEDs), I can now start moving away from HPS, and maybe consider them for winter grows only. The CMH are really good, but slightly add to the heat issue (not nearly as much as HPS). It couldn't be a better time to start back up with the bedroom 5x5 RDWC. I was intending on using all LED strips in the 5x5, turning them up to only around 70% or so to get the spread while being more efficient on power usage. However, the better solution seems to be running only 4 bars along with some supplemental red/uv and maybe a CMH. We'll see. With crisis comes opportunity, so the remaining 4 bars may be used along with the Viparspectras in the garage flower tent in an attempt to lower heat while maintaining adequate light, hopefully to squeeze out another (smaller) run before the real summer heat kicks in. Eventually everything will be replaced with more "REAL LEDs" like the bars.
To put things in perspective, there is quite a bit of drying/trimming/curing coming up along with cleanup, garage flower tent prep, bedroom rdwc setup, cloning the pHunt, propagation tent prep, maintaining the site and the budding
shirt & craft projects...the list goes on. Not to mention I have a day job and a family ? This is the epitome of "be careful what you wish for" ? The pHunt plants are going to be finishing week 4 of veg, which makes me really nervous because I haven't vegged this long since soil/coco, and I'm already anticipating some big plants, even for smaller pots (especially in the RDWC, this oughta be interesting to say the least).Nevertheless, it has been a crazy and AWESOME ride so far. I wouldn't trade this for anything
(well, maybe my day job if I could do this as a career, that way I could put 117% of my efforts towards it all ?)Now that's outta the way, time for some pics.
